Is folk fashionable? It always seems to be bubbling away just under the surface, there always seems to be articles like this, once every few months or so. I guess with Mumford & Sons being big and Laura Marling, maybe right now the folk sound (note I said the folk sound rather than just folk) is fashionable. Is this the same with other genres? Do jazzers always see jazz articles saying how some jazzboy is the next big thing? I guess to my ears this hypothetical next big jazzboy thing would probably sound so mainstream I wouldn't notice. MOR AOR with a tinkly piano, perhaps. A bit like Mumford & Sons. MOR AOR with a tinkly banjo.

Take any bunch of art school students (or ex 'ASS's') who have formed a 'band' and happen to be vaguely fashionable in this particular microsecond i.e. are excessively praised by a few music journos for a brief moment until they move on to some other 'flash-in-the-pan'. Part of the muso-journalistic formula, in cases like this, involves sticking a label on this particular bunch (sorry, 'band') of ASS's or ex ASS's. So the journos rummage around in a hat full of labels, kept specifically for this purpose, and pull one out at random. In this particular brief instant the random label happens to be 'Folk'.

John McCusker put it very well in an interview around the time of 'Under One Sky'. Something like every few years the media rediscovers us, but we're still here all the time in between, getting on with it until the next 'revival' come along.

Mumford & Sons are Coldplay with all the interesting bits taken out. Good luck to them and all who sail in them, but not my mug of Earl Grey ...

I suppose folk music does evolve, so when it was fashionable last time, this time a slightly different take is the fashion.

Compare this to say, chamber music. if an advert or film features some chamber music, ticket sales go up at fashionable venues such as Martin in the Fields.

For a while.

But interpreting a piece rather than strict adherence to how the last lot played it is a brave move indeed, and never results in changes in fashion.

I agree with John McCusker about always being there and if it becomes fashionable for a while, then so be it.

Don't forget, "music" and fashion are part of the same in many ways. Music is a way of expression so will always be linked to fashion. Methinks my interest in many traditional songs and tunes is more to do with nostalgia for a youth of drinking, singing and fun. That could never be a driver for those who decide what is fashionable and what is not.

When folk becomes fashionable, it is a great opportunity for the professional players to have an Andy Warhol 15 mins and pay a few bills. For many who go to folk clubs however, I reckon the craze won't even register.

It doesn't take the media to mention beards, sandals etc. I even wrote a song laughing at the stereotype, amazing how many think it is in the abstract. (!)

Yes, I do, I've been doing it professionally for eighteen years now and you see the media taking a look at it now and again and saying folk music's trendy and then it goes away and I go on making a living. We're all still doing it, but certainly in the last few years I've never seen it so healthy. We see it from a different perspective because we're the ones going out and doing it. It's not just a newspaper that writes an article saying it's not about beards any more or Aaron jumpers and that there's now young people doing it. Well, there's always been young people doing it, and there always has been.

I subscribe to The Spectator ~~ one of few intelligent publications around, so probably beyond comprehension of last poster ~~ have done for years ~~ have won some of their competitions, had many letters pubd therein &c.

MGM ,with respect just because you have won competitions in a publication and had letters published[ I am sure they were excellent letters too]does not mean that the rest of the content is as good as your contributions. I know nothing of this publication The Spectator having last accidentally read it in 1965., I am still recovering.

Dick: I can only be bothered to enter competitions or write letters to a publication which I read regularly to check if they have landed. I would scarcely do that if I did not find the remainder of its content of interest, would I now?

Given the audience, I thought it was a good piece, if a little slight. I'm sure the purists would rather a 3,000 word monograph by Karl Dallas, but it's horses for courses, and this is the Spectator. I used to love the magazine, but gave up on it about 10 years ago when it started to become rather too rabid and neo-con and began publishing the diatribes of Rod Liddle and Melanie Phillips. In the Nineties the Spectator and the New Statesmen were the essential bookends for any informed discussion on the issues of the day. Now both have slid off their opposing ends of the shelf.

Went to A folk Music conference in Sept hosted by the Trad Arts Team in Birmingham and the EFSDS or is it EFDSS? Anyway figures from a Survey by Trad Arts showed interest in 'Folk Music' has had it's biggest surge since the 60's over the past 3 years. Does that make it fashionable? I prefer to think youngsters are beginning to se behind the falseness and fakery of the X-Fctor illusion, and are returning to real music and instruments. And history shows Folk Music gets more popular in recessions, perhaps as much of it is free